


buoyancy

by stereosymbiosis



Category: Free!
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Making Out in the Pool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereosymbiosis/pseuds/stereosymbiosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Nagisa,” Rei says again, ducking his head, partly out of embarrassment and partly just because he can't bring himself to look his friend in the face.  “Nagisa, you have to tell me if you want me to kiss you before I start to over-think this and mess everything up again.  You have about five seconds.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	buoyancy

**Author's Note:**

> this is a (late) christmas present to my wonderful girlfriend, the nagisa to my rei. i hope you enjoy :)

Nagisa’s fingers touch the edge of the pool as he finishes his lap and Rei launches himself into the water. He swims maybe half a lap before surfacing, sliding his goggles up over his forehead and wiping the water from his eyes. “Was that any better?”

“Rei-chan, that was almost perfect! You’re getting better at the exchange every time we practice it!” Nagisa chirps from the end of the pool, where he’s already flung both of his elbows behind him on the ledge, his legs floating up in the water. His voice echoes in the large room that houses the Samezuka pool, which is empty except for the two of them. Their joint practice doesn’t start for another half an hour, but Nagisa had suggested heading over early just to warm up and practice a little on their own, and Rei couldn’t argue with a plan so logical as that. Although they have done a little practicing at Rei’s insistence, Nagisa mostly just floats around in the pool, or dives to the bottom to see how long he can hold his breath. Rei can’t really see much without his prescription goggles, but he can tell by the way the water laps around him that Nagisa is lazily kicking his legs in and out of the water. Besides, he just _knows_ Nagisa well enough (more than anyone, more than himself) to guess exactly what position in which he’s relaxing, even without the help of his glasses.

“Thank you, Nagisa-kun,” Rei says, pulling his goggles back over his eyes, but they’re smudged all over and that just makes it worse. He sighs and pulls the goggles down, letting them hang loosely around his neck as he swims back to the end of the pool.

Nagisa’s hands are folded underneath his head on the edge of the pool and the whole length of his body is floating on top of the water, like he’s pretending that he’s floating on a raft. Rei grabs hold of the ledge next to him with one hand and Nagisa opens his eyes just for a second, and he smiles, the widest, most content smile that Rei has ever seen, and he aches because of it. He wants to make a graph of Nagisa’s smile, calculate the angle at which his lips are quirked, trace the concavities and convexities of his lips with his fingers, and feel that smile pressed against his own mouth. Rei’s whole body aches with it, and he wants Nagisa so badly it feels like he could burst out of his skin. The feeling hits him like an ocean wave that he didn’t see coming, the kind that knocks you to your knees and steals your breath as you struggle to keep your head above the water.

“Rei-chan?” Nagisa asks, opening his eyes again. “Are you all right? Did you get lost in your calculations again?”

“Hmm. Something like that.”

“How many times have I told you that math doesn’t work in the water? You just have to feel it,” Nagisa says, and he waves an arm wildly in the air, as if that could illustrate how to _feel_ the water.

“And how many times have _I_ told _you_ that the laws of physics don’t just stop working once you’re in the water?”

“Well, that’s no fun.” Nagisa lets go of the wall with his other hand, still floating on his back in the water. “It sure feels like the laws of physics don’t apply when I’m floating on my back like this. I feel like I’m weightless!”

Rei starts to say, “That’s because of buoyancy,” but he spies Nagisa mouthing along to his exact oft-quoted words. Nagisa, for all his dramatics and silliness, is a smart kid. He knows the exact scientific reason why people can float in the water, even if he might not be able to rattle off all of the pertinent details like Rei can. Rei’s not unused to being teased by Nagisa -- it happens just about as often as Nagisa wants to get strawberry-flavored ice cream, which is usually at least three times a day -- but this is one of the first times he’s splashed water on Nagisa in retaliation.

Nagisa splutters, his legs kicking out in the water as he falls out of his floating position. Rei almost feels a little guilty until Nagisa grins menacingly, and the next thing he knows Nagisa’s completely underwater, tugging viciously on Rei’s feet and pulling him under with all his body weight (which, admittedly, is not that much). Rei gulps one breath through his bark of laughter as he’s pulled underwater, and he squeezes his eyes shut since his goggles are unhelpfully around his neck instead of over his eyes. He can’t see a thing, but he can feel Nagisa’s fingers squeezed around his ankles as they descend. Just as Rei bends his knees to propel himself back up to the surface, Nagisa uncurls his fingers from Rei’s ankles, but doesn’t let go -- he trails his fingers up Rei’s legs, and in the cold water it feels like a line of fire tracing up his skin. Rei’s eyes pop open in surprise as Nagisa’s thumbs brush his inner thighs and he sees, just for a split second, Nagisa staring up at him in the blue water, his hair floating like a halo around his head. But the water stings Rei’s eyes and his lungs are starting to burn, so he pushes his feet against the bottom of the pool and kicks to the surface.

It only occurs to him once he’s taken a breath of much-needed air how his reaction might have been received. Nagisa has always been affectionate, and once he went from the mildly-annoying short kid trying to get him to join the swim team to Rei’s closest and most supportive friend, Rei kind of stopped discouraging Nagisa from touching him. He’s grown so used to Nagisa stealing his glasses, or poking him in the side while Rei’s not paying attention on the train, or jumping up and down and grasping Rei’s hand in excitement. A part of him (all of him, even) looks forward to Nagisa touching him so unselfconsciously, since Rei feels so unsure of himself. But this -- this is the first time Nagisa has ever initiated something that could possibly be interpreted as beyond the realm of merely friendly. And that is all Rei has wanted for weeks, for months, even, for Nagisa to touch him the way Rei wishes he could.

Nagisa is still underwater, even after Rei catches his breath and wipes the water out of his eyes. _Rei, you idiot_ , he thinks despairingly as Nagisa surfaces gracefully just a few feet away from him, very near the edge of the pool. Nagisa pushes his wet hair out of his eyes and the look on his face is just horrible; Rei has never seen him look so upset without actually crying, not even that time Nagisa had three too many slices of pizza and made himself sick.

“I’m so sorry, Rei-chan, I didn’t mean to cross any boundaries,” Nagisa blurts out. Nagisa _never_ apologizes for crossing boundaries. In fact, it’s probably his favorite thing to do -- invade Rei’s personal bubble, poke and prod and make him feel generally uncomfortable -- so Rei knows this is bad.

“Nagisa,” Rei says haltingly, and Nagisa’s face scrunches up and his mouth curls into a little moue of displeasure. No, no, _no_ , that’s the opposite reaction Rei is aiming for.

The water in the pool is mostly still now, but a little wave hits the corner of the pool behind Rei and pushes him forward, just an inch or two, but it’s all he needs. He doesn’t even think, he just does, which is so foreign to him but something in his gut -- or maybe the look on Nagisa’s face -- propels him forward.

He grabs the ledge of the pool next to Nagisa with one hand, and then swings his body through the water to stop right in front of his teammate. Rei crowds his body up to Nagisa’s, and they’re so close that Rei can see every drop of water slide down Nagisa’s neck, even without his prescription goggles on. Their knees bump together as they tread water, but that’s the only place they’re really touching, even though they’re so close that he’s sure that Nagisa can hear how loudly his blood is pulsing through his body.

“Nagisa,” Rei says again, ducking his head, partly out of embarrassment and partly just because he can’t bring himself to look his friend in the face. “Nagisa, you have to tell me if you want me to kiss you before I start to over-think this and mess everything up again. You have about five seconds.”

There’s a moment where Nagisa hesitates, and Rei lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He kicks his legs back in the water, to move away, to escape, but Nagisa grips his bicep before he can get anywhere. Rei finally brings himself to raise his head and the look on Nagisa’s face has transformed into one that he’s seen aimed in his direction so many times before, like that one time Rei was so worried he was going to fail his physics exam that he made himself ill but ended up getting ninety-seven percent, or when he waited for Nagisa at the train station because he missed their usual morning train to school even though it would make them both late to their first class. It’s probably Rei’s favorite expression of Nagisa’s, just because he looks so _fond_ , and it makes Rei’s heart beat even faster.

Nagisa pulls himself up against Rei and oh, he can feel Nagisa’s warm breath on his lips. “Oh my God, kiss me, you big dummy,” Nagisa croons, tilting his head up expectantly, and Rei finally presses his mouth against Nagisa’s.

Kissing Nagisa is like taking a first breath after being underwater for way too long; it fills Rei’s body with warmth, with relief, with something unknowable and unnameable, but he knows that he can’t live without it. Nagisa’s arms wrap around his shoulders and his fingers tangle in Rei’s wet hair, and Rei only moves closer to the wall of the pool to find some kind of purchase, but he ends up pushing Nagisa up against the edge of the pool. His back bumps against the cool tiles, Rei’s arms pinning him on either side, and Nagisa _gasps_ into his mouth as the entire length of Rei’s body presses into his.

“N-Nagisa-kun, I didn’t mean to push you up against the wall like that,” Rei stutters, but Nagisa just wraps his legs around Rei’s hips and crosses his ankles against the small of Rei’s back, and all Rei can do is thank the principle of buoyancy for making it so easy to do that in the water.

“Mmm, I don’t mind, Rei-chan,” Nagisa says breathlessly, fingers carding through the hair at the nape of Rei’s neck, and the light touch of his nails against his skin makes something short-circuit in Rei’s brain. Nagisa presses his lips along Rei’s jaw in small, closed-mouth kisses until he reaches the side Rei’s mouth, and Rei’s eyes are closed but he can feel Nagisa’s smile, so wide he can feel the apple of Nagisa’s cheek pressing into his. Nagisa’s smile matches perfectly with the feeling in Rei’s chest, and the warmth that spreads throughout his body despite the cold water of the pool. He feels overwhelmed with it, and there’s no manual for this; it’s not a physics problem, it’s not a calculation. There’s no way he can reason or rationalize his way through whatever they’ve started, but somehow he doesn’t mind at all.

“It looks like Rei-chan is thinking really hard when he should be _kissing me_ really hard instead,” Nagisa says teasingly, his lips still pressed against the corner of Rei’s mouth.

“Maybe,” Rei chuckles. He turns his head, ever so slightly, to capture Nagisa’s lips with his own, and Nagisa tightens his grip around Rei’s shoulders and hums happily into his mouth. Rei’s lips slide open and he can taste Nagisa’s lips, and the overwhelming taste of pool water doesn’t even make him want to stop, it just feels too good. Nagisa pulls Rei’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucks and Rei can practically feel it throughout his entire body, oh god _oh god ohgodohgodohgod_. He presses his heels against the wall of the pool to find some purchase and pushes his hips up, and his groin rubs against Nagisa’s, and Nagisa makes the most delicious moan, or at least Rei thinks it would be delicious if a sound could have a taste. He does his best to taste it anyway, licking Nagisa’s lips and rolling his hips just to feel that moan reverberate through his own skin.

Nagisa presses his heels into Rei’s back, pulling him in closer, and Rei flattens Nagisa flush against the wall of the pool, the skin on his chest burning where it’s pressed against Nagisa’s. Rei kisses Nagisa’s mouth, then moves to his jaw, then down to his neck, and then --

\-- someone coughs, loudly and pointedly, from across the room.

They both freeze, and it would almost be comical if it wasn’t so embarrassing. Rei lifts his head to look, but without his glasses he can’t really make out who is at the other end of the pool. He can see, though, that it is more than just one someone; several people are silently lined up near the entrance and just...watching them. Logically, it’s probably just both the Iwatobi and Samezuka swim teams, but it feels more like the whole world was just looking in on one of his most private moments.

“Oh no, this isn’t happening,” Rei says under his breath, his forehead falling onto Nagisa’s shoulder, and Nagisa just bursts out into laughter.

“Oh my God, look at Kou-chan’s face, she looks like her birthday came eight months early,” Nagisa laughs breathlessly, his whole body shaking with it.

“Fucking finally,” someone who suspiciously sounds like Rin mutters from across the room. Rei groans and lets go of Nagisa, drifting a few inches away in the water.

“I kind of want to sink to the bottom of the pool and not come out until everyone leaves,” Rei mutters darkly, but he’s smiling anyway, and his cheeks are starting to hurt from it.

“It’s okay, Rei-chan,” Nagisa says cheerily, and then presses a quick kiss to his cheek before kicking off from the wall and swimming across the pool to the rest of their teammates.

Rei can’t get rid of his smile for the rest of the joint practice, no matter how hard he tries.


End file.
